by Joy Dettman
‘I carried their shopping out to the car – ’
‘And opened the car door for her. And held it. You don’t need to speak to her! I see the way you look at her when you think I’m not watching. Bloody hangdog cur of a man – you haven’t got the guts of a louse, you haven’t. The only reason you still play the organ in church is so you can hide behind it and look at her, smile at her behind my back.’
‘Then join the choir and you can sit up there and watch me.’
‘Oh, no. I can’t sing as well as Stella. You’d just make comparisons. You always have. How was she in bed, anyway?’ Ron rolled to his side, offering his back to her abuse. “‘Stella was always clever with her hands. Stella was always creative.” I bet she was!’
‘I’ve had enough of your stupidity. I’m tired. I’ve been on my feet since seven this morning and I’ll be on them again in six hours. Go to bed.’
‘You can’t even touch me any more. You won’t even share my bloody room.’
He rose up on his elbow. ‘And who decided they wanted me out here, eh? Who told me to get the hell out of my own room?’ His voice rose now, matching hers. ‘I’m sick of your jealousy, Marilyn. You get in one of your moods and you try to take it out on her.’
‘Now you’re defending her.’
‘I’m not defending her. But what has she ever done to you?’
‘What’s she ever done to me? What’s she ever done to me? She ruined my bloody life. I never had a chance with you. She was in our bed on our honeymoon. And your mother. “Stella is such a gentle, well raised girl. Stella is this. Stella is that. Stella’s father is a minister, you know. Poor Marilyn’s hung himself. Not a very stable background.”’
‘Take a pill. You get yourself wound up and you don’t know what you’re saying, and Mum never ran you down. She did a lot for you.’
‘Bullshit she did. “Poor Ronald, she can’t even give him a child.” I heard her. I heard her with my own ears. “Stella would have made him a wonderful wife. She’s so good with children.” That bloody old maid bitch! And when I finally had a baby, she tried to take him away from me.’
‘That’s a lie, and you know it. You were always asking her to take him, and she never said no.’
‘Never said no. Didn’t say no to you either, did she, you liar?’
‘Don’t judge everyone by yourself, and she’s been a second mother to Tommy, and a good friend to you. You couldn’t have coped without her when Tommy was small.’
‘I had to work.’
‘You didn’t have to work. I wanted to put a junior on when Dad died – ’
‘So you could feel her up in the storeroom.’
‘You’re sick, Marilyn. You need help.’
‘And you’re not a bloody man’s bootlace. I never had a husband. I tied myself to a bloody lovesick worm. She had you. She’s had you all our married life – ’
‘I’ve never touched her.’
‘Don’t you give me that shit. We all knew you were doing it.’
‘Oh, Christ. I want a divorce.’
‘Divorce? So you can go to her and cry on her shoulder. I’m not divorcing you, you bastard. You’re stuck with me until the day you die.’
‘That’s your decision. I hope it makes you happy. Now get out of my room – ’
Thomas’s window was only a metre from the sleep-out louvres, and they were open tonight; he’d been getting an earful for hours. It got boring after a while. Anyway, he had his own problems.
Parsons had given Kelly a prescription for the pill, but her old man wouldn’t let her take it – or so she said. Now she was in the pudding club again, and blaming him for it because he didn’t use a condom. All the others had used a condom, so it had to be his, or so she’d said today after school.
‘It’s cool,’ he’d said. ‘So get another abortion.’
The trouble was, she didn’t want an abortion. She wanted him to nick off to Sydney with her and play mummies and daddies in some hole with a kid that could have belonged to any one of two dozen. Maybe he might have taken up the offer a few months back. Got out of town, gone on the dole, but he had better options now. Bigger fish to fry. Maidenville by night was full of opportunities with old bull-moose Templeton gone.
It was after one when the noise in the sleep-out settled down, but he couldn’t sleep. Around two he got out of bed and took a couple of the pills his old lady had left on the kitchen table, and he downed them with a half a glass of whisky. He was used to beer and her pills, but mixing them with his old man’s whisky made his head buzz and his muscles feel like they were made of unravelling silk.
He needed space – empty space – so he got on his bike and rode around town, feeling his muscles sort of smooth out, knit up, slip into overdrive.
‘She’s cool man. She’s cool.’ Everything was cool now. Even the town clock doing it’s Dong, Dong, Dong, sounded cool. ‘The lonely death knoll on the hill that never was. Dong. Dong. Dong. Maidenville swallowed up by the earth, but still the clock dongs on. It’s a great donger.’
He laughed as he pedalled on, swerving from side to side on the empty road. He was on a high now, hyped up, his bones trying to break out of his skin, jumping around like the Davis’s pup that he and Kelly had drowned down at the river.
Stupid little mongrel, it had followed them up the street one night, let them pick it up. They tied it into a plastic garbage bag and threw it in the river, and watched it try to run free while the water crept up. It was still running when the bag disappeared around the bend. Tonight he knew how it felt. Like his bones were locked in some place, trying to run, cut loose, but there was a bag stopping their escape.
When he got to Stell’s gates, he found them wide open. ‘Maybe she’s expecting me,’ he said. ‘Been on her own for nearly a week now. Never disappoint the ladies, Thomas.’ He laughed, choking on it, trying to hold it in. Keeping close to the shadows, he dismounted and leaned the bike against the open gate before creeping through the tall shrubs to the shed.
The doors were shut. Her doors had never been shut against him. He liked that shed, liked poking around in it, finding stuff that you never saw anywhere else. ‘Old bitch,’ he said, trying the side door, wanting to kick it in, but knowing if he did, it would set every dog in the neighbourhood barking.
‘Stupid old maid bitch. You think locked doors can keep me out if I want to get in. You stupid old bitch. You can’t keep me out if I want in. No-one can.’
A part of the shadows, he crept around to the back of the house, feeling like a silky black Indian stalking his prey. The wire door wheezed open, and he reached for the doorknob, turned it.
Nothing.
He turned it again, pushed against the door. ‘Locked up like Fort Knox. Who do you think you are?’ he snarled.
His pen-light drawing a pale line on the gravel, he followed it up the side path to the twin glass lounge room doors. They were made up of small square panes. One door had a snib and bolt at the top, with the other one locked to it by a key. That key was always in the lock. He knew this house, knew it well. Old Stell used to watch the kids’ shows on television with him in this room. The dark room, he’d called it when he was a kid.
‘Can we go in the dark room, Aunty Stell?’
Wilson’s trees next door stole all the light, even in the day time; at night it was a black hole. The trees, mainly gums, were creaking and moaning tonight, shedding their leaves in the wind. It was a good night to be out. No-one would expect anyone to be out. There was the smell of fire on the wind too. Some place was burning.
He stood in the space between fence and wall, and he sniffed at the air. Everything was cool tonight. Everything was new, cool – even the moaning of the trees. They sounded like the souls of all the people old Templeton had buried; an army of souls coming back to get him. But he wasn’t here, was he? He was in Africa. Thomas gave a ghostly moan that ended in a giggle. He tried the door, knowing it would be locked, but also knowing that this would be the best side
of the house for a break-in. With the end of his torch he tapped the glass, gently. Just one good tap would knock out a pane, and he could reach in and turn the key.
She’d be in bed, and she’d have her bra off, and maybe she’d have her knickers off, and he’d just peel back her nightie and –
‘Coming ready or not, Aunty Stell,’ he whispered, but he couldn’t get up the nerve to tap that glass.
He rubbed at his groin with the pen-light. Rubbed slow. Nothing was happening. Maybe it was scared she might tell this time. But she didn’t before, so why should she this time? He unzipped his fly and his hand worked hard on unresponsive flesh. He tried encouraging it with his fantasy of old Stell’s silky tongue. It was all tuckered out and he wasn’t in the mood anyway.
Maybe it was the pills and the booze, he thought, but he liked the pills and the booze, liked the way it made him see things from a different angle.
‘You’ll save, Aunty Stell. I got two more weeks,’ he said, gliding back to the cypress hedge where he picked up his bike, wishing he’d nicked a spray pack from the supermarket. Paint her hedge. Paint it yellow. Paint her drive yellow.
‘Just follow the yellow brick road.’
He was giggling, looking at the hedge and planning his artwork when the pedal of his bike caught on the leg of his jeans. His reflexes were slow tonight. He tripped, fell against the hedge, and the bike fell on top of him. The outside growth looked green and soft enough, but behind it, the branches were sharp. They scratched his face, gouged at his shoulder.
And the silky Indian was gone, and Maidenville looked like shit again. He scrambled to his feet. His bike weighed nothing, and he tossed it to the gutter, then he kicked the hedge, angry at that which had dared to reach out to him, hurt him, to rip his new shirt, make his shoulder bleed. He kicked the open gate, then he went after his bike and he kicked it too, threw it at the hedge.
‘Fucking bastard. Fucking bloody hedge.’ His arm was bleeding. He sucked on it, spitting blood as he hiked back to the dark side of the Templeton house, where he stood wanting to smash the door. Just get a brick and toss it through. Just get a knife and cut her, make her bleed too. But he didn’t have a knife, only his bloody torch.
Angry, breathing fast now, he peered over the paling fence into Wilson’s yard.
Wilson didn’t used to have a dog, but he whistled softly just in case. Waited. No barking, no scuttling in the long grass. Easing himself up, he scrambled over the fence, prowling through the tangle of grass and overgrown creepers until he stumbled on an open garage.
It was a treasure trove. Thomas found exactly what he needed . . . exactly what he was looking for.
The Hedge Fire
Dream and reality had intersected somewhere along the line. Stella heard the fire siren, but in her dream it came from an airfield, perhaps one she had seen in an old war film on television. The voices of men penetrated her dream; officers, shouting, giving orders. Then came the knocking. Persistent. And awareness of strange light. Flashing light. Still close to her dream she sat upright, her eyes scanning familiar walls.
In the week since her father had left, she had slept badly, and last evening, Friday evening, it had taken her hours to fall asleep. At midnight, she swallowed two Aspros – not for a headache, but in the hope of gaining some much needed rest. Deep sleep had taken her then, carried her away to that airfield and the burning plane she knew was her father’s.
She slid from her bed and ran down the passage to her father’s room. There was a wall of flame outside his window. The cypress hedge was burning; flames shooting metres into the sky dwarfed the men in her drive.
‘Stell. Are you in there, Stell?’
She pushed the window high and called down to the one knocking at her front door.
It was Chris Scott, head of the voluntary fire brigade. He looked up, saw her there. ‘We’re letting her go. Not much use saving a blackened skeleton. Some young hooligan’s been getting ideas from his city friends.’
‘I’m coming down, Chris.’
‘Better shut your windows or you’ll end up with a house full of smoke.’
The window closed, snibbed, she dressed quickly, and hurried downstairs and out through the front door.
‘Is the shed safe from sparks? It’s old wood. Do you think I should move Father’s Packard out?’
‘It’s safe as houses. We got onto it early.’
‘Who reported it?’
‘Old Wilson. Said he got up to go to the loo, and saw the flames. Rang the brigade. But it’s no bloody accident. Someone’s doused the length of it with petrol. You could smell it when we got here. We found the can too, and Jennison reckons it’s the one old Wilson gets his motor-mower juice in. I wouldn’t put it past the old coot to have done it himself. Taken the opportunity to get in a hit below the belt while the minister is away.’
‘No. No. He wouldn’t do that. He and Father mightn’t be on the best of terms, but he is no firebug. Thank goodness he saw it.’ She stood well back from the wall of fire, waving to a group of dressing-gown clad neighbours who were enjoying the pre-dawn drama from the opposite side of the paling fence.
The hedge was as old as the house. Stella had known for years that the dead wood in the interior would go up like a bonfire with the least provocation.
By dawn only the embers were left. The men went in with axes then, felling the last of the standing wood, knocking over charred gateposts, and what remained of the aged wooden gate. As the fire truck drove away, the sun came up to peer between Mr Wilson’s forest of trees, and for the first time in her forty-four years of life, Stella could watch a vehicle drive beyond the hedge.
She stood on when the fire men had gone, stood immobile, watching the weak light grow stronger. She could see the post office on the corner, and the town clock, and the two church steeples. The sun was catching them, lighting sun fires on steel. It lit the Catholic steeple first, then touched its Anglican neighbour.
‘My God,’ she breathed.
Light glowed like fire on the swimming pool across the way, and it painted the side wall of Jennison’s service station. She could see the second floor of the new high school building. Then the cars began, cars full of people off to somewhere, but they slowed as they drove by, to peer in, to see what had been hidden behind the hedge, just as Stella was peering out.
To her, it was like looking at a scene through some formerly unknown window, some wide window that looked out from a secret room, to which she had only now found the key. She had been locked out of that room, its window hidden from her all the days of her life.
‘I wanted that hedge gone. For years I have planned to cut it back. Now it is gone.’
She didn’t return to bed, but continued the work of the firemen, raking up, encouraging the smouldering trunks to burn away by feeding the fire with smaller branches and garden refuse.
Many walkers stopped to stare, or speak. Miss Moreland walked over at ten. She found a different Stella, a girl with long wild hair and black hands; a smudge-faced, laughing Stella. They drank tea on the front porch, then together they toured the garden, propping up damaged plants, removing those too far gone to save, and just looking at the new vista while Stella spoke of a picket fence.
‘Go and have a look at your garden from across the road, girl, then decide if you dare to lock it away again. There is little enough beauty in fair Maidenville.’
‘I believe I am a little afraid of my new freedom – like a prisoner who has served her time and has now been tossed out on the street, unprepared. Perhaps I’ve become institutionalised, my dear.’
‘Well, in my book, you’ve overpaid your debt to society. Both gate and hedge are ash, and you are free, girl, and I’m here to see you get used to it fast. Consider me your parole officer. Now if you’ve got a sharp pair of scissors, I’m going to cut a few inches off that hair. And if I ever see it pinned up in a bun again, you’ll go back into solitary.’
Stella showered all the ash away before Miss Mor
eland took up the scissors.
So soothing, those old hands combing her hair, touching, cutting. Stella relaxed, left the fate of her curls to the cavalier scissors, and when it was done and the scissors placed down, she felt the loss of those gentle old hands, if not of her hair. There was so much she wanted to say, wished she could say, but like her father, she was uncomfortable with personal issues.
‘Thank you, my dear. I believe you just saved Father thirty-odd dollars. I have been intending to have it cut these past weeks, but couldn’t raise the necessary incentive.’ It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t what she wanted to say. ‘Thank you too for your care, and support, and for your friendship.’ But it still wasn’t enough, so she took the old hands in her own, and she kissed them.
‘Kissing, now is it? You’d better cut that out or you’ll have this town calling us a pair of raving lesbians, girl,’ the old lady said, but she left her lipstick smudge on Stella’s cheek.
At one they drove to the coffee shop for a light lunch. Later, with the money Martin had left on the dresser, they bought a new letterbox from Steve Smith, and a bag of pre-mixed cement so they might set it in the ground.
All that remained of the old gatepost was the rotted wood beneath the earth. A small crowbar and a trowel removed it. The flashy red letterbox was put in its place and held upright by Miss Moreland while Stella tamped the earth around it, then poured in the mixed cement. By three it stood beside the drive, waiting open-mouthed for some long-banned junk mail.
The friends washed their hands and drove again to the centre for a well earned coffee, then for an hour they walked the long street, peering into shop windows and wandering into stores.
The shoe shop in Main Street was closing down. They had a bargain table out front and Stella picked up a pair of white sandals with five centimetre heels. ‘Only twenty dollars, marked down from sixty-nine.’
‘Try them on, girl.’
They felt right, made to order, made for narrow feet that had once looked fine in strappy sandals, for feet that had once loved to dance all night at church socials.
